Tag: Adirondack 46

Lower Wolf Jaws (30), Upper Wolf Jaws (29), Armstrong (22), Gothics (10), and Sawteeth (35)

8/14/25

The lower great range. I’ve been dreaming of doing this hike for a decade, and it’s finally here. I had no illusions of being able to do this as a day hike, so we repeated our strategy from Haystack (3), Basin (9), and Saddleback (17) and hiked in on a Thursday evening, did the big hike on Friday, and hiked out Saturday morning. This is gonna be a long one, so grab a cup of tea and get cozy, let’s dig in!

The plan – hike in at The Garden (pink), camp at a campsite near Wolf Jaw Lean-to (blue star), next day hike up to the ridge (light blue), over to lower WJ then back down and up to UWJ (light purple), to Armstrong (red), to Gothics (orange), down to Sawteeth (yellow) then back up over Gothics and down the Ore Bed Brook trail (dark purple) to get back to camp.

Thursday 8/14 – It begins

We got to The Garden trailhead at about 2pm, signed in and started walking at about 2:30pm. Look how cute and clean and fresh we were!

We must have been feeling good because we made it to the first junction within 10 minutes of starting, and stayed on the Phelps Trail to Marcy rather than exploring the abandoned south side trail.

It was a beautiful day and we’d hardly encountered any other hikers by the time we reached the second register, an hour and 20 minutes and 3 miles from the trailhead. We signed in and this time, instead of going towards JBL, we went left toward the Wolf Jaw Lean-to.

I’d never actually been this way before so I was excited to take this route! Just a minute from the register is this outpost for the NYSDEC headquarters.

The trail past the outpost gave me instant memories of hiking in Patagonia. The way the narrow dirt path cuts through the long grass is just the same. Remind me to write those trip reports sometime 😀

And another minute later, we were crossing Johns Brook on a swinging bridge. We had to exercise some serious self control to not stop here and go for a dip – it wasn’t the hottest day, but we were damp with sweat and the brook babbled in a way that was so enticing….but alas, we were trying to make sure we got to a camp site before anyone else did, so on we went.

Just past the bridge is yet another junction – this time we headed in the direction of the middle sign “Upper and Lower Wolfjaw Mountains”.

Another 0.1 mile stretch brought us to the last junction before the lean-to, which meets the abandoned south side trail.

We weren’t exactly sure where the designated campsites were on this trail and assumed they’d be close to the lean-to, which looked to be at about 0.8 miles up, just before the next junction. The path here is pleasant, just a bit of incline and smooth walking.

Within 10 minutes, we spotted a campsite marker! The path to the site looked pretty overgrown but the site itself was ideal – private with just one tent spot, close to the water, plenty of trees for my hammock, and smooth flat ground for the tent.

We threw the tent up in a jiffy to secure our new home for the next two nights and immediately – and I mean IMMEDIATELY – scampered down to the brook and sat on some very nice rocks to soak our feet and examine our route on the map for the next day.

By 6pm, camp was totally set up and we set about for some relaxation, playing some cards in the tent before the sun went down.

Not sure if it was the hike, the heat, or the stresses of the week, but I was soooo tired. I cozied up in my hammock a little before 8 to read until I couldn’t anymore.

Friday 8/15 – Trekking

Well, despite being so very tired, guess who was up most of the night?! I swear, my inability to sleep before a big hike must be chronic. Nevertheless, we were up and moving about by 6:30am to load our pack and eat some breakfast. Check out how masterfully I packed this bear can – can I get a round of applause please?

Can’t forget the coffee!

We may have been sleep-deprived, but we were so happy and excited for what was to come! One thing to take account for on this trek is that once you’re up on the ridge, there’s no water source. So we topped off our two nalgenes and filled our 3L water bladder with water from the brook, and packed our sawyer mini filter with us to grab more water on the way back down the range.

It turns out my sherpa is sneaky sneaky and takes pictures of me walking like a zombie. I am not an early bird, but here I was at 7:30am leaving camp to go climb an absurd number of mountains.

Within 10 minutes we passed the Wolf Jaw Lean-to. Everything was quiet and seemingly empty this morning.

I just love the long shadows and bright green in the early morning sun through the trees.

Freshly-made spider webs clung to tiny branches in the trees – which are pretty until you take one smack to the face. Perils of being the first people on the trail for the day.

Somehow it took us 20 minutes to reach the junction to the wolf jaws. So I’m thinking the campsite was really only like 0.3 miles up the trail rather than being much closer to the lean-to. We stayed on the red trail here and began the 0.9 miles up to the range!

At some point, I spotted this gorgeous green moss surrounding a cute rock and took a picture.

Which is when Gildo pointed up to literally a whole field of cute rocks surrounded by gorgeous moss.

In general, we were in very good spirits, feeling strong physically, and the trail was in great shape. We were so grateful to not be doing this in the rain like our fated HaBaSa trek 3 weeks prior, when boughs from the trees crowding the trail continually dumped water all over us. It wouldn’t be the Adirondacks however without at least a little mud!

For the most part though, the trail looked like this. Dry and wide and rocky. Can’t get away from rocks here.

40 minutes after leaving the last junction, we arrived at the top of the ridge. This junction and the next one are a little bit confusing – while this junction appears as a single dot on the map, it’s actually a bit more spread out than that. Go to the left toward Lower Wolf Jaw…

Walk down this path for literally 1 minute…

And boom! The rest of the first junction. We could see how people might get turned around here.

We thought this was a good place to take a quick break, hydrate, and have a snack for a couple of minutes.

Another 0.2 miles and we were at the next junction. This is a 3 way junction, but only 2 of them appear to be marked with a sign – the way to Lower Wolfjaw is straight up some rocks on a well-defined path but there’s no sign that I could see to indicate that.

Up until now, the trail was very walkable with few spots that needed upper body involvement. But immediately after the second junction, that all changed.

That said, it was still pleasant, the rocks were dry and easy to grip, and we enjoyed views of Upper Wolf Jaw behind us on what was turning out to be a bluebird day.

It really is a lovely hike up to Lower WJ. Interspersed with the climbing sections are spots like this – it’s definitely not a long grueling hike to the summit like some other mountains I know (looking at you Iroquois).

20 minutes and 0.3 mile past the last junction, we were sitting on a rock we decided was the summit along with another hiker, and a few others who joined while we enjoyed our break. High Peak #34 is in the books!

We were feeling fantastic at this point – we hit our first high peak of the day less than 2 hours after starting and we felt full of energy.

My poor sherpa has to put up with this all day. Send thoughts and prayers.

We didn’t linger but a minute before turning to make our way back to the junction and on over to Upper WJ. We made it back to the closer junction at 9:50am (and I saw there WAS an indicator to LWJ, I just…didn’t see it somehow on the way up?).

And to the second junction 10 minutes later. From here just 0.9 miles to Upper WJ.

After a bit of flat and a bit of down, we started some solid climbing. But again, compared to HaBaSa this really felt like a piece of cake.

Looking back we could see al the ground we’ve already covered from Lower WJ.

After hiking for 40 minutes, we saw a spur in the trail leading to a rock, from which we could see our destination. But the thing is….we weren’t sure what we were looking at? When the trail started going down again quite a bit we questioned all we knew to be true. Were we just on Upper WJ and therefore heading towards Armstrong? Did we…miss it? Seems impossible considering there’s only one way to go. Either way, we just kept on going.

After a bit more climbing, we stood upon a nice ridge looking out to the peaks in our very near future.

There was a good amount of this throughout the day – volume up to hear me complaining about it.

Upper wolf jaw
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Notice that big smile on his face? It’s because he thinks we were about to summit our THIRD peak of the day, believing we’d already gone up and over Upper WJ. Look how happy he was.

PSYCH! We had not. That bump we went up and over was presumably Wolf Jaws Notch, something that is NOT INDICATED ON OUR DANG MAP. Humiliating. We hung a sharp right here to scramble up the rock to the summit of Upper Wolf Jaw.

What a view! We shared the rocky ledge again with a few other happy hikers, all of us in high spirits with how gorgeous the day was turning out to be. At 10:56am, we had hit summit #2 of the day, and my 35th high peak!

See that ‘little’ bump between Lower WJ and where I was standing taking the picture? That’s Wolf Jaw Notch – should be a peak in it’s own right, but it’s presumably not prominent enough.

We had a cool view of the mountains ahead of us for the day – Armstrong, Gothics, and Pyramid in view, and Haystack and Basin from 3 weeks prior. Cool to know what those look like considering we were in a cloud for each one!

We rested up for just 15 minutes before heading back down and continuing on our way to Armstrong.

Descents between mountains in a range always feel so demoralizing, but it wasn’t really getting to us this time. I think with having done HaBaSa in the rain so recently, literally everything else feels easy by comparison. After about 25 minutes of descent and plateau from Upper WJ, we started climbing up Armstrong. I love a good ladder!

We stopped to admire the moss on our way – it was so lush with the rain this summer.

It’s so hard to capture the scale of the slabs of rock you climb on these hikes, so see Gildo for comparison.

After 40 minutes and 1 more mile, we were sitting atop the 3rd summit of the day and my 36th high peak!!! Single digits left from here on out!

These views did not disappoint. It seemed like each peak we summited had better views than the last. I loved looking towards Gothics but I couldn’t help but notice that Sawteeth wasn’t even visible past Pyramid peak, and the logistics of the day started to cast doubts in my mind.

I swear my knees aren’t bulbous, those are the knee braces I wear to keep my patellas from sliding off track. If you’re a seasoned reader, feel free to skip to the next picture – if you’re new here, Hi! I have a chronic connective tissue disease called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and it pretty much wreaks havoc on my body. So it’s a small miracle that I’m able to do these hikes at all, and it’s the reason why it’s taken me so long to hike all 46 of them. I have to be conscious of every step I take, and I have to have an almost supernatural ability to listen to my body and treat it accordingly. Thanks for following along my journey so far, I hope that brief explanation helps explain some of my weirdness!

Awww we look so cuuuuuute.

We hung out up there with the other happy hikers for 25 minutes before picking up and moving right along. We decided that we’d assess how we felt on Gothics – adding on Sawteeth is no small feat when tackling the range from this direction. We’d chosen to start at The Garden so we could camp and make the trek more manageable – but that means to get Sawteeth, we’d have to go over Gothics to Pyramid, down Pyramid and up to Sawteeth, then back up over both Pyramid and Gothics, and down the other side. So while this is a 5 High Peak day, it’s really more like 6? Not even including Pyramid.

Looking up at Gothics is very intimidating! But I’d heard so much about the view from there, they were what kept me going. We had just 0.4 mile to descend, then 0.6 back up Gothics.

At 12:30pm, after 15 minutes, we’d reached the junction between Armstrong and Gothics. Interestingly, the sign here shows 0.4 to the summit of Gothics, but my Nat Geo map says 0.6. Make of that what you will.

Just past the junction we spotted the most gorgeous little grove of moss. I contemplated taking a nap in it, but ultimately decided against it. Maybe next time.

I love trails like this so much. It’s so cool to see how this mountain is literally just a GIANT rock with a thin coating of organic stuff growing out of it.

15 minutes later, we were entering the Alpine Plant Zone! That’s always a good sign that we’re getting close!

Looking back towards Armstrong – Gothics is the tallest peak of the day. It felt so empowering to look down on all the other peaks we’d already hit.

AND WE’D MADE IT! At 12:57, just 40 minutes and 1 mile after leaving Armstrong, we were sat atop the 4th summit and my 37th High Peak!!! Not that I’m counting down or anything. We had a brilliantly clear day – no clouds or haziness from humidity or wildfires – and could see well into the mountains in Vermont. I love so much the layers and shades of blue of the mountains in the distance.

We found the marker in the rock and grabbed a mandatory shoe pic with it. Interestingly, none of the summits had an official sign marking the summit.

These cool labelled pics come from my Peakfinder app. It’s so interesting to see what all these peaks in the distance are, I’m just terrible at identifying them on my own.

We sat up there in bliss. It was remarkable. The 360 degree views of my favorite place on Earth just filled my heart. Looking down to Pyramid however kind of brought us back down to earth.

That little green bump behind and to the right of Pyramid peak in the middle? That’s Sawteeth. Waaaaaaaay down there.

So we had a decision to make. At this point, we’d been hiking for almost 6 hours. We still had plenty of water left, however we’d been subconsciously rationing what we had left knowing that there’s nowhere along the ridge to refill. We could either go back to camp and come back for Sawteeth another day….or, we could go for it. Given the title of this post, I think you know which one we chose.

The junction to Sawteeth is not right at the summit of Gothics – it’s along the ridge a little ways. We made it there at 1:18pm and went left toward Pyramid and Sawteeth.

Views were magnificent. We had fantastic views of the upper great range, with Saddleback right in front of us. It doesn’t look like so much from this angle!

We were pretty exposed up on the shoulder of Gothics so I took a minute to add a layer and my sunglasses to protect me from the sun – AND the very very hungry flies. It was about this time that my fantasy of donning a flying squirrel suit and falling with style to get off the mountain started to kick in. Ausable lake makes a tempting landing strip, IMHO.

The ridge on Gothics is stunning at every step. It was fascinating to look down into a bowl formed by the Great Range, the green valley below and Ausable Lake in the distance.

That sharp jutting rock is Pyramid Peak! While it is over 4000 feet, it’s not considered a high peak in it’s own right because it lacks prominence from Gothics. So instead it’s just a really nice place to stop on the way to Sawteeth. From here, it does look like we have to descend a TON, and like it should take a long time to get there.

We descended for probably 10 minutes on trail like the picture below, then climbed for 5 minutes up Pyramid….

And somehow, that was it! We were there! Literally just a hop and a skip from Gothics – 15 minutes was all it took.

I get the hype about this peak. You get basically all of the views you have on Gothics, PLUS Gothics itself.

We even had a great view of Indian Head and Fish Hawk Cliffs towering over the lake below. Indian head is the rocky outcropping on the left in the picture below, fish hawk cliffs is the one towards the right. We felt sentimental seeing these because we were married on top of Indian Head almost 2 years ago! Of course there’s a blog entry for that trek, check it out if you want: Indian Head.

I’ll be honest, though we’d been in high spirits all day, looking down at Sawteeth….waaaaay down…..did not feel confidence-inspiring. We’d been hiking for over 6 hours and after summitting Sawteeth we’d still have another 5.5 miles to go to get back to camp. Fortunately I was still feeling good, no unusual pains, but we started seriously considering hiking out on Lake Rd, getting a ride (somehow??) back to The Garden, and hiking back in. I really didn’t know which option was worse at this point, so I said let’s just get there and then decide what to do.

Coming down from Pyramid was STEEP. It was the first time I wasn’t totally loving the trail all day. It just. kept. goinggggg. Theoretically (based on the map, if you trust that thing) it should have only been 0.9 miles from the top of Gothics down to the col, and another 0.5 back up to Sawteeth. I tell you from experience it was at least 10 miles. Maybe even 20. The map is wrong.

There’s got to be some fancy word for the psychological phenomenon that occurs when you’re hiking down something that you know you’re just going to have to come right back up. Dread? Is that the word I’m looking for?

Tell me HOW it took us 50 minutes after leaving Pyramid Peak – a full hour and 10 minutes from Gothics – to reach the col?! Why did it take us so long?! Partway down, we were guessing that we just had a tenth or two of a mile left to go, when a kind woman coming up said she estimated we still had SIX TENTHS TO GO. What do you MEAN?!? I’m telling you….10 miles.

Eventually, we reached the col and a bit of flat ground before the climbing started again. At the junction, we met a woman who’d come up over Sawteeth who let us know the way ahead was quite steep. Oh joy.

Really, the first few tenths of a mile weren’t steep at all, just the last section was. This last 0.5 mile took us the expected 20 minutes to reach the summit, and then there we were.

And you might be thinking, ‘Oh wow! What a beautiful view though!’ Friend, THAT IS GOTHICS IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT PICTURE. That mountain seemingly 3 lightyears in the distance? We had to go BACK up and over that. Who planned this trip anyway.

Ah right, it was this chica right here. What a ding dong. A ding dong with 38 high peaks under her belt!!!!! As my sherpa would regularly remind me to try to keep my spirits up on the long slog back to camp, ‘What number are you at?!’ ‘Thirty – effing – eight 😩’.

Hand on hip, serious contemplation going on here. Of what, you might ask? Well, if it’s possible for us to bushwhack our way around Gothics, through that pass way over there. Complete with audible complaining.

At some point I decided it was best to just….not look up. 7.5h into our trek, up and over 5 high peaks, and we basically still had to summit one more – Gothics again. (Ok ok you’re probably telling me to shut up and stop my complaining at this point – I swear I’m usually pretty happy go lucky about being in the mountains – but I was really concerned about my body’s actual ability to do this without winding up in excruciating pain, and landing in a flare the next day. When I flare, I’m useless – can’t even get out of bed, let alone carry camping gear on my back and hike out 4 miles.) Ultimately though we did decide to go back over Gothics rather than face the unknown journey of Lake Rd.

We stayed for 20 minutes before continuing on our way, enjoying some snacks and water. Somehow, I completely forgot to pack our Victory Chocolate! So we agreed to eat some Victory Tuna when we made it back up Gothics. We headed back down to the col at around 3:20 and made it to the junction 20 minutes later, and started the loooooong steep climb back up Pyramid. I, a professional rock skedaddler, employed my impeccable technique for climbing up steep slides. It….looks more impressive in person.

View post on imgur.com

40 minutes later, we were back on top of Pyramid, trying to avoid eye contact with Gothics looming above us, and headed right back down the other side. There’s exactly one square foot of ground between Pyramid and Gothics between descending and ascending, so we grabbed a victory shot of that.

By now we were getting pretty exhausted. I estimate we’d gained and lost somewhere around 4000 feet in elevation and had been hiking continuously, save for a few short breaks, for nearly 9 hours. That was something I hadn’t factored in to deciding on Sawteeth – the sheer exhaustion of having to go down and back up.

10 minutes from the col between Pyramid and Gothics, and a full hour and 20 minutes after leaving Sawteeth, we were back on top of Gothics.

We really needed a break to have a snack and rest our legs and I don’t think we could have chosen a better spot. This is on the trail down to the Ore Bed Brook, on the shoulder of Gothics. We actually toyed with the idea of hanging out on Gothics until sunset, but it was only 4:50pm and the sun wouldn’t set for a few more hours and we badly needed to refill our water supply. There were no clouds anyway, so the sunset would have been disappointing (this is what I tell myself anyway).

Victory Tuna is a pretty poor substitute for Victory Chocolate, but hey, at least get got some protein!

Coming down the back side of Gothics is super cool. I felt like a proper mountaineer – all smooth slabs of rock and incredible view of the tallest peaks in the ADKs. We were heading directly towards Saddleback, where we’d been just a few weeks prior.

The features on this side of the mountain are awe-inspiring. Check out this huge crack in the rock that Gildo beckoned me to come see.

I had totally forgotten until we saw them that the cables are on this route! I was so excited to use them, and they didn’t show up a moment too soon. My legs were tired and wobbly – walking on a decline down a smooth slide is the most tiring thing in my experience, more than boulders and rocks, because there’s no way to really adjust how you step to give muscle groups a break – you just have to keep going.

My toes were getting real acquainted with the tips of my boots, so I took the opportunity to descend backwards using the heavy chains to counterbalance me. Pictures just don’t do justice for how steep this was.

“This is the slide that never ends, it goes on and on my friends…” According to the map, the slide is less than 0.5 mile long, but it felt much longer. It took us about 35 minutes, going a little more slowly because my knees were starting to tweak, to make it to the junction with Saddleback and the Ore Bed Brook.

After this point on, I didn’t take many pictures because I was using my poles. I successfully avoided using them earlier in the day to try to save my elbows – they hurt when I put weight on them – but now with my knees showing signs of distress, it was time. Ore Bed Brook is probably no ones first choice of path to descend the Lower Great Range on, it’s rocky and tricky and my dedicated sherpa turned around every few steps to lift me down steep and treacherous obstacles. If you want more pictures and descriptions, go check out my report from HaBaSa. At any rate, it took us 20 minutes from the junction to reach the most amazing stairs in all of the Adirondacks – a sight for sore eyes!

I love these stairs. I love them so much. Pay no attention to the look of focus on my face – when the knees get tweaky, I need to concentrate completely on every single step I take, and I just look grumpy.

By now it was 6pm and we were out of water minus a sip or two left in one of the bottles. We kept an eyes out for easily-accessible streams to filter some water from along the way.

At 7pm, we found water! This trail down the Ore Bed Brook is loooong and rocky, 2.5 miles in total with a lean-to marking the 1.8 mile mark. I was feeling the dehydration and moving pretty slowly. I couldn’t tell if I was experiencing my unusual pain or if my body was simply utterly exhausted, stiff, and fatigued. Gildo stayed at the stream to filter some water and sent me on my way to cover some ground at my snail’s pace, so on I went.

At 7:25pm I reached the lean-to – just a little over a mile and a half to get back to camp, and Gildo caught up with me at about that point. A nice gulp of cool water and I felt like a dried up sponge coming back to life.

At 7:52pm, 2 hours and 10 minutes after leaving the junction at the top of the Ore Bed trail, we reached the next junction. Just over 1 mile left to go – 0.8 miles back up a hill to the junction with the Wolf Jaw lean-to, the back down to camp.

By now the sun had set and we donned our headlamps. In my memory, I was moving agonizingly slowly, but in reality, we hiked that 0.8 mile stretch to the junction in just 30 minutes.

The short trod back to the camp never felt so long – Gildo went ahead to look for it while I slowly plodded on, quietly willing my body to go just a little further. I was worried we’d passed it, breaking at the possibility of having to go back up and considering just sleeping under a nice tree somewhere. But then my headlamp illuminated Gildo just ahead, next to the tree with the indicator for our camp. We’d made it just before 9pm, 13.5 hours after starting.

We wasted no time in preparing some food, cleaning up our dirt and sweat with a wet shirt (well Gildo went for a frigid dip in the stream to clean up…I did not.), and passing out.

Saturday 8/16 – Over and Out

All in all, I think most of my pain from the previous day was more or less normal, and I was just stiff and exhausted in a totally normal way! We woke up at around 8 in the morning feeling surprisingly good, ate our breakfast, and got the heck out of there at just before 10am. I was so excited to be home, take a shower, and pet my dogs. Oh, and it was my birthday!! I’m in absolute shock that I felt so good – not even sore, just a bit stiff – which was the best birthday present I could have ever asked for.

I won’t ramble on much longer – the hike out was smooth. A ranger at the outpost joked that I made Gildo carry all the camp gear, and I said Yep! I know what I’m doing! My sherpa sure is a trooper, and he does it all with a smile on his face if he knows that he’s enabling me to accomplish my dreams.

For a beautiful Saturday morning, we really thought we’d see more people, but that wasn’t the case! We alternated quiet walking with happy banter, and decidedly agreed that between HaBaSa and the lower great range (at least the way we’d done it), the lower great range was harder. In my mind, I completely equate Sawteeth with Couchsachraga. I know they’re different – I know Sawteeth at least has a view, and the only way to summit Couch is up and over the Santanoni range while Sawteeth has several options. But the way we’d done it….yeah, it felt very similar. If I did this again, I would not add on Sawteeth. It took a really enjoyable day and honestly made it much more stressful, painful, and exhausting. That said, I’m very glad I did it! 38 baby!

Look at us – we reached The Garden just an hour and 40 minutes after leaving camp, covering those 4 miles at an excellent pace. I hope you enjoyed this long read, I’m looking forward to giving you just 4 more trip reports before I finally complete my 46er journey. Happy Hiking!

38 down, 8 to go.

Lower Wolf Jaw: 4175′

Upper Wolf Jaw: 4185′

Armstrong: 4400′

Gothics: 4736′

Sawteeth: 4100′

Total Duration: ~17 hours total

Total Distance: ~16 miles

All images are property of adktrailtalesandtails and may only be used with express permission.

Dix Mountain (6)

10/19/2024

Wow, it’s been a while since I was last up in the high peaks! The last time I was here was in 2022, I climbed the rest of the Dix range but had to orphan out Dix itself. This time I had my husband to accompany me and we decided to make a weekend of it by staying a couple nights in Lake Placid. I was most excited about sitting in a hot tub after the hike! At this time of year, the access road to the Elk Lake trailhead is closed, making access to the other peaks in the range pretty difficult. However it’s about the same distance to the summit of Dix from Rt 73, so that’s what we did! We reached the Round Pond trailhead at about 8:45am.

We’ve been to this trailhead before and embarrassingly, it still tripped us up. We looked around for a minute before checking with another pair of hikers to find out where the actual trailhead is.

This is just the sign for the parking area, NOT the trailhead. The actual trailhead is just a few feet down the road.

We unsurprisingly started climbing pretty much right away. Based on the map, we knew we’d have an initial climb until reaching Round Pond, then another stretch of climbing before the trail would flatten out for a good while.

Oh how optimistic and naive we were when, 7 minutes after starting, we saw this marshy clearing and started to wonder if we’d already reached Round Pond! Of course not, dummies! 😅

It always takes a good half hour to find that groove when starting a hike, when the mind overcomes the body’s desire to lie down under a nice tree and just…stay there. We moved slow and steady, and after 14 minutes from the trail head we had made it the 0.6 miles to Round Pond. Yay! Only 6.2 more miles to go to reach the summit!

What a gooooorgeous day we had! We enjoyed a few minutes to ourselves here letting two groups of people pass us.

By this point we were getting nicely warmed up as we walked around the little lake, spotting beaver sign along the way.

We missed peak foliage by about 2 weeks, but some of the trees still had beautiful bright yellow leaves, and we passed through a whole section of forest full of them. At this point I had actually mis-remembered the terrain on the map – I thought we just had to go uphill a little bit and then it would be flat, so we were kind of booking it to stay ahead of the group behind us. Then we realized it was more like a mile of uphill so why don’t we chill out a little bit and let the folks behind us just pass us up so we could take our time! Duh 😆

Eventually the climbing levelled off. It took us about 45 minutes to go the 1.7 miles from the pond to the next junction.

It’s really important to note that on the map, it looks like there are two junctions – one to Round Mountain, as the sign below shows, and one to Noonmark Mountain, but there is actually just ONE junction. Going to the right here would take us up Round Mtn, going to the left would go to Dix, and going straight (more or less) is the way to Noonmark, but it wasn’t as obvious a trail as the others.

We were really looking forward to a nice, easy 1.9 mile mostly-flat walk through the woods before the more arduous climb started. The trail here follows along a stream, weaving in and out of it along the way.

Conditions were mostly dry, though we still couldn’t escape a few muddy sections that made for some fun navigation.

As we grew nearer to the leanto on the map it became a bit difficult to make sure we stayed on trail. There’s one spot in which we crossed a little stream, and continued straight to the banks of the larger N. Fork Boquet River – it almost looks like you’re supposed to rock hop across the river, but actually the trail turns sharply to the right.

There was some blowdown near the leanto, where we spotted some signs for camping directing hikers to the leanto, but we made sure not to follow those and instead cross the river to stay on trail. This spot was particularly hard to follow; the group that had been ahead of us actually ended up behind us because they got turned around here! On the other side of the river, just before 11am (2 hours from the trailhead) we knew we’d reached the end of our easy 1.9 mile stretch and it was time to start a gradual ascent.

This section of forest was so lovely to walk through. It consisted of lots of spindly deciduous trees, some still with bright yellow leaves, so we could see farther through the wood than we usually can.

The path followed the stream for a while longer, and I couldn’t help but notice how rocky the trail is. I tend to be a powerhouse on the way up but have a hard time on the way back down the mountain, so I was already getting nervous about how rocky the trail was.

The higher we climbed, the further we moved through the seasons, with a glimpse of the conditions we’d find ourselves in at the summit.

The grade became a bit steeper with about 1.5 miles to go to the summit, following the stream closely and offering the occasional glimpse of the slide to come.

It was right about noon when we found a nice log in the sun on a little island in the stream to sit and have some lunch. We hadn’t taken a break in the 3 hours since we started so it was nice to sit for a few minutes, but we didn’t linger long due to the cold. 20 minutes of rocky muddy climbing later and we were at the base of the slide.

As we were hiking to this point, a group of 3 young men passed us going down – they were adorably enthusiastic about the day they were having, and warned us to stay to the right on the slide and exit at the cairn – the slide does not lead to the summit. They found this out the hard way, going up for sunrise and bushwhacking out of the top of the slide, then sheepishly admitting that only 1 of the 3 had brought microspikes – because of those two mistakes, they missed sunrise! Thanks to them though, we were prepared when we made it to the slide.

While I probably wouldn’t want to be on this slide in wetter conditions, we really weren’t on it for more than a few minutes before exiting at the cairn. Even so, the wind here was ROUGH! It was so cold I had to sit down and layer up right away to stay warm. Thanks to those folks coming down trail, we knew to look out for the cairn – which was great advice, because it wasn’t super obvious.

Just after re-entering the trail from the slide, we saw this no camping sign, indicating we were right at 3500′! This also meant we had a heck of a climb ahead of us.

This past spring, I spent 4 days solo trekking through mountains in Patagonia, and I was amazed at how good I felt. I had no pain, no issues at all – I loved every minute of it. So I’ve been wondering what’s different about Patagonia from the mountains here? Is it the air? The water?

No. It’s the FREAKING ROCKS. Who put all these rocks here 😭 The paths in Patagonia where I was hiking were much more level – yes, you were climbing uphill for 7 miles, but the trail itself was flat and easy to walk on. That’s the difference. But I digress. It was just before 1pm when we got our first views of the day.

And then…

More….

ROCKS. Seriously, this last half mile to the junction felt so much longer than it was, it was such slow going. We had one or two near miss incidents with slick ice before we decided it was dumb to go any further without putting on our microspikes.

Just when we were starting to feel like the climb would never end, we reached the junction! Just 0.4 miles left to the summit! Despite all my whining about the rocks, I was actually feeling so good all day. I felt strong and had so much energy on the uphill.

The third sign reads: “Beckhorn Trail Junction – 2.7miles, Lillian Brook Leanto – 3.3miles, Slide Brook Leanto – 4.7miles, Elk Lake Trailhead – 7miles”

We instantly scrambled our way up a steep icy ledge and got this view.

From here on it was very icy, interspersed with deep sections of mud that threatened to pull off my boot once or twice, along a ridge with lots of nice spots to sit in the sun and enjoy the view. We continued along just until the trail was about to go down toward the beckhorn, then found our own perch to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We did it!!! Summit time – 1:45pm, 4h45m after leaving the trailhead.

Enjoy this closeup of my face.

We savored our hard-earned victory chocolate, then hubby took a nap on a rock while I took photos. Despite the snow around us and on the way up, the summit was so warm! There was no wind at all and the sun warmed us up. It was so nice to be able to rest up there without worrying about getting cold.

At 2:30pm we decided we should probably be on our way. My #1 priority now was to make it back to our motel by 8pm so we have time to soak in the hot tub! Lucky for me, I got a lift down off the tall ledges to help save my joints by this handsome guy 😊

I wasn’t joking about the deep mud from the snow and ice melting in the warmth of the sun…I was able to navigate around one of the wannabe boot-thieves, but this is the only way I could think of to get around this one.
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We were back at the junction at 3pm, ready for our steep treacherous descent back down to the slide.

The going was slooooow on the way down, as expected. I can fly up but I have to take such care on the way back down to make sure I don’t hurt my knees. Even so, the trail is so rocky it was impossible to avoid tweaking my knees and ankles at least a few times. For months, I’ve been climbing the mountain near my house 2-4 times per week, with larger more strenuous hikes on the weekend, including some of the Lake George 12ster peaks, and I’d done so without pain. I finally felt like I was gaining strength and endurance back and I didn’t want to ruin it on this hike.

It took us an hour to get back to the slide from the junction. I was relieved that we’d gotten the steepest part of the hike behind us.

It didn’t take long to reach the end of the slide and slink back into the woods along the stream filling with water from snowmelt on the summit.

Another 40 minutes after that, we were nearing the lean to. Somewhere along the way I started getting pain in my right knee again – I wholly blame the rocks. As we hiked down I remember taking about 4 steps on a flat, dirt section of trail and saying “Ah, this is nice!” and then it was over 😭 I was so grateful to be back to the 1.9 mile flat stretch.

We crossed the river towards the lean-to, and spotted the reason why people may have gotten so turned around here. Notice the arrow sign in the third picture below, obscured by branches of the fallen tree.

And just like that, our nice little flat section was over, and we were back at the downhill to Round Pond right at 5:30pm.

I was having a pretty tough time hobbling along by this point. The smallest tweaks from stepping slightly off on a rock would send pangs of lightning out from my knee, so I tried to keep it locked in place and use my hip to move my leg. All of this is doable on flat even ground, but on a rocky downhill trail? Not so much.

At 6:20 we reached Round Pond and caught the last remnants of the sun hitting the trees across the pond.

By now I had started thinking about the inevitable dilemma I have after every major hike – what should I do first when I finish? The hunger, exhaustion, need for a shower, and a soak in the hot tub all seemed equally urgent. Maybe I could eat a pizza in the hot tub? That might do the trick.

My husband had been carrying my backpack for the last couple of miles to take some weight off my knees and try to help with the pain, but I guess it must have gotten too much for him to watch me struggle because suddenly it wasn’t enough for him to carry my backpack, and he picked me up and carried me probably 3/10 of a mile down the trail. By the time he set me down and I again hobbled down the trail by the light of my headlamp, I almost cried tears of joy when I saw headlights of cars on Rt 73 in front of me – I was about 15 feet from the trail register and had no idea.

We made it back right at 7pm! We ordered some food from our favorite local brewery in Lake Placid, picked it up on our way to the motel, ate in the car, then hopped in the hot tub. On the map and trail signs, it says this hike is 13.6 miles, but both of our phones clocked it in at about 14.9 miles.

30 down, 16 to go! Happy Hiking!

Dix Mountain: 4,857′, elevation gain: 3,725′

Total Duration: 10 hours

Total Distance: Either 13.6 or 14.88 miles 🤷‍♀️

All images are property of adktrailtalesandtails and may only be used with express permission.

Santanoni (14) and Couchsachraga (46)

11/6/2021

Ah, the dreaded Santanoni range. Santanoni, Couchsachraga (pronounced “Kook-Suh-Krah-Guh”), and Panther – these three do NOT have the greatest reputation, to say the least. They’re unmarked, unmaintained trails and notoriously muddy. To prepare for an inevitably long day, we headed up the night before and stayed at a nearby hotel – it was absolutely adorable, but unfortunately it was the single most uncomfortable room I’ve ever stayed in, and I didn’t sleep for a single minute all night. I was thrilled when it was finally 5am and we got ready to head out to the trailhead 30 minutes away. We arrived at the trailhead at 6:30am, geared up, and headed out into the dark cold morning by 6:45am.

The trail starts off along an old road for about a mile and a half. It’s nice easy walking and a welcome warm-up to the rugged trails in our near future.

As we walked, the rising sun began brightening the sky through the trees. Which is fortunate, because it would have been easy to miss the junction with our eyes glued to the ground as we walked in the dark!

At 7:30am we reached the junction and turned right. As we walked we heard a growing sound of rushing water, and 15 minutes later we were crossing a wooden bridge over a stream.

It was definitely below freezing when we began the hike but we were comfortably warm while we walked, and we spotted some cool patches of permafrost emerging from the earth!

For the first hour and a half of walking, the trail had been blissfully rock and mud-free, and I was starting to think, “Maybe it’s not as bad as everyone says!”

Literally – and I mean LITERALLY – 5 minutes later, and we were walking up an actual stream that was calling itself a trail, complete with slippery corduroy striping the lengths between the mud pits.

The trail became pretty rugged at this point, despite being maintained. There was lots of running water, slippery corduroy, and icy puncheon, but fortunately the elevation gain was gentle and gradual, following by the REAL stream all the while. Going slow, it wasn’t too bad to navigate and I was grateful for the logs that had been put down in the wettest spots. Two hours after starting, we reached the closest point to the stream and took a moment to sit and enjoy the waterfalls.

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After 15 more minutes of tactfully avoiding plunging our boots in the mud, we reached the junction to the Express trail up Santanoni at 9:15am.

We realized immediately that we were the first people of the day going up the express trail, despite a handful of groups the signed in ahead of us. We chose to go up the express route and down the Bradley Pond trail rather than going DOWN the express trail, potentially in the dark, as it seems to be more steep than the way down by Panther. The bad news of trailblazing an unmarked trail – at times, it was difficult to know where to go. We ended up following a series of snowshoe hare and fox prints most of the way, imagining some action-packed tale of what must have gone on while we walked. The good news – the path was covered in stunning ice formations the whole way up!

We soon passed a flat wetland-looking area that we had to skirt around, hopping back and forth over small streams.

We really didn’t anticipate more than a dusting of snow, but fortunately we did of course pack our microspikes and didn’t waste any time in putting them on. On the flip side, we didn’t think to pack our waterproof gear, and with all the overnight snow piled on the trees bordering the narrow trail, each time we brushed past them we were showered in clumps of heavy wet snow.

We took our time, enjoying the journey, and stopped for a refreshing popsicle along the way…

The climb seemed to go on and on, and got icier and steeper higher we got.

An hour and a half after leaving the junction, we started to catch our first glimpses of the views, and it was shaping up to be a gorgeous day!

30 minutes of climbing later and we were nearing the top of the ridge.

Finally, 2.5 hours after leaving the junction to the express trail, we reached the top of the ridge.

We hung out for just a few minutes before taking the path left from the junction and going up the ridge toward the summit of Santanoni.

And 15 minutes later, at 12:20pm – 5.5 hours after leaving the trailhead – we reached the summit!

We didn’t stick around too long as the cold was sinking in and headed back toward the express junction.

Notice the little peak to the left of the range in front of Gildo – THAT is Couchsachraga. I won’t lie, I definitely cursed when I saw how far away it is from the range, and how absolutely small! It’s well below 4000′ and is the smallest of the 46 high peaks. Not to mention it has no view, but it’s a mud slop to get to, and is the furthest removed from the trailhead. So. I was not thrilled, and Gildo had a laugh at me bad-mouthing a literal land feature.

We enjoyed the junction for another few minutes, then descended the path towards Times Square, where the paths to Bradley Pond, Panther, Couch, and Santa converge.

An hour later and we were standing by a large boulder with a view at Times Square.

We took a few minutes break to soak up the sun before continuing on to the junction with Couchie. The map is a little deceiving here. It looks like all 4 trails converge at the same point, but really coming from Santanoni you’ll meet the junctions in the following order: Couch, Bradley Pond, Panther. Turning down the path to Couch, we went down down and down some more through steep, icy rock slabs. I was shocked to see some people wearing sneakers without spikes, and cotton sweaters. They must have been tougher than me as I struggled with my boots and spikes on the ice! Part way through the descent, my dreaded knee pain reared it’s head in my left knee. I took a few moments to adjust my brace to try and keep the pain from worsening, but it didn’t really have an affect. I wasn’t about to abandon Couch being soooo close, so I took a deep breath and padded on.

Anyway. After an hour of the most demoralizing descent in history, we reached the mud bog in the col between the ridge and Couch. There is definitely a lot of hype about the mud here, and sticking my pole in the mud I can see how disastrous it would be to land in it up to your hip, but it really just took a couple minutes of careful foot placement to cross it without any mishaps. Poles are certainly an asset here!

After the bog, we headed straight back up to false summit after false summit, and finally after an hour of this we reached the summit of Couch! I found a nice root on the ground, immediately perched myself on it, and started stretching out my legs to try and relieve the pain. It was already 3:45pm, we’d been hiking for 9 hours straight, and had taken almost no breaks to sit and stretch due to the cold, wet conditions of the trail. I’d found out the hard way that my boots have apparently sprung a leak, so my feet had been enjoying an indoor swimming pool for the last 4 or 5 hours – I didn’t want to risk sitting still for too long and getting cold from that, and from our damp clothes.

As we prepared to leave after enjoying a snack and of course some victory chocolate, a sense of dread filled my stomach as I realized that it was already 4pm, the sun would set in 2 hours, we were as far from the trailhead as we could get, and my knee pain was not exactly indicative of a speedy return trip. With probably 2 miles ahead of us to return to the top of the ridge, we headed off.

The descent from Couchsachraga wasn’t bad at all – only maybe 300 feet or so and we were back at the bog, carefully navigating the fragile ice sitting atop waist-deep mud, and some sparse branches to use as flotation devices.

And then the climbing began. The climb back up is just as deceptive as the climb down – there are several ‘bumps’ or false summits to climb up and over that misled us into thinking that we were closer than we actually were. I was hopeful that we’d make it to the ridge in time to head up Panther before sunset, as it’s only about half a mile from the junction on the ridge. Even if we made it in time though, my knee was in no shape to add extra miles. At this point, it was even hurting to go uphill. At 5pm, we crested yet another bump in the trail and caught the gorgeous golden light of the setting sun.

With one last push up a steep portion of trail coated in thick ice, we were back on the ridge at 5:35pm. At this point we knew we’d be descending in the dark, so we chose to take a short break back at the boulder with the nice view while watching the sunset. I also took the opportunity to change out my socks for some nice dry ones, and cleverly folded the tops down over the lip of my boots to prevent snow from going in the tops. With the worst timing ever, I’d misplaced my gaitors somewhere at home and didn’t have them the one time I needed them most!

At 5:45pm, we gathered our things and headed back towards the junction to Couch, only this time we continued straight towards the junctions for Bradley Pond and Panther. There are no markings for any of these junctions, so we just had to keep our eyes peeled. The first junction after passing the path to Couch, we turned right and started the descent.

At this time we were just starting to put our headlamps on as it was becoming more difficult to see. I was pretty disappointed that this path didn’t seem any less steep than the express trail, despite appearing so on the map. I was relying on my trekking poles very heavily to take the weight off of my left knee and to try and baby my right one just in case it might start to hurt too. It’s so odd – I used my new knee braces just a few weeks prior to climb Seymour, and both knees did great! My right knee is definitely the worse one, and this time the right one seemed to be fine but the left one was in agony even with the brace. So maybe it’s back to the drawing board.

Somewhere along the descent, I was going down a steep sheer rock face coated in thick ice, and had braced my poles and my right foot’s microspikes so I could lower my left leg, and something went wrong. It happened so fast that I’m not sure what exactly happened, only that I was suddenly crashing down on top of some sharp branches jutting into the side of the trail. Fortunately I didn’t fall far at all, but I did land on my ribs and shoulder on those branches and felt pretty banged up. After a minute to make sure nothing was bleeding, I stood back up and carried on.

Obviously, there are no pictures to document our journey because at this point we were in total darkness. For a while, the trail was super rocky and difficult to navigate with running water and ice flowing over uneven surfaces. My left knee had started to stiffen, as it does when this pain happens, so imagine trying to rock hop from icy rock to icy rock without bending your knee! Slowly, we made our way down, and I was grateful to not be alone this time. Fortunately for us, the snow on the ground and the traffic from earlier in the day made it pretty easy to stay on trail despite being in the dark, and by about 8:30pm we had made it to the junction at Bradley Pond.

From here, 4.4 miles to go. We turned right and carefully navigated the corduroy until we were back at the junction with the Express trail up Santanoni – 3.5 miles to go. By now my poor body was clearly in a flare. If I over-do any repetitive physical activity, especially if some part of my body has already started to experience abnormal pain (like my knee, not muscle soreness), it will trigger an inflammatory response so that all of the joints in my body will start to experience the pain and stiffness. That’s where I’d been at for the last 2 hours – every single joint hurt (expect for my right knee??). Everything from my spine to the littlest joints in my fingers. It got so bad that I lost all grip strength in my hands and needed help unscrewing the cap from my water bottle! How pathetic!

I had decided to keep my microspikes on to help me navigate the slippery corduroy and puncheon traversing the wet wet path, and what a lifesaver they were. On flatter portions of trail I was able to make great pace, even without being able to bend my knee, and by 10:30pm we were again crossing the bridge over the river near the trailhead. ~2 miles to go!

At about this time, the fitness app that Gildo had been using to GPS track our journey recorded us as having gone over 16 miles over 16 hours just before his phone died. We felt such a sense of elation as we reached the junction with the road – 1.5 miles to go. I was cruising here – the ground was flat, dry, and so easy to walk on compared to everything else that day. It occurred to me that we started on this road in the dark, and finished in the dark, so we didn’t really get to see what it looked like. Gazing upward, however, we were treated with the most stunning starscape in the absolute darkness of the high peaks wilderness. I didn’t take any pictures, but just image a milky way bright enough to just about light the path for us. At 11:45pm, 17 hours of almost non-stop hiking since we began, we arrived at the register. I signed us out, then we both collapsed into the car before immediately changing out of all of our dirty clothes.

My 23rd and 24th peaks are done – I’m officially over halfway there! I can’t bear the thought of going allllllll the way back up that range for Panther; maybe that will be a trip for the winter when all of the mud and rocks have been covered in snow. Until then, happy hiking!

Santanoni: 4607′

Couchsachraga: 3820′

Total Duration: 17 hours of hiking

Round Trip Distance: ~16 to 18 miles (GPS says 18, alltrails says ~16 without Panther)

All images are property of adktrailtalesandtails and may only be used with express permission.